Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Not alphabetical.
  • adjective Unable to read; illiterate.
  • noun One who is unable to read; an illiterate.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Not knowing the alphabet; illiterate; unable to read.
  • Non-alphabetic.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective not comparable (of symbols) Not alphabetic.
  • adjective comparable (of a person) Illiterate, unable to read or write.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an illiterate person who does not know the alphabet
  • adjective relating to or expressed by a writing system that is not alphabetic
  • adjective having little acquaintance with writing
  • adjective not alphabetic

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Greek analphabētos, not knowing the alphabet : an-, not; see a– + alphabētos, alphabet; see alphabet.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

an- (not) + alphabetic

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Examples

  • So not a few of the Amirs of Sind were analphabetic and seemed rather proud of it: “a Baloch cannot write, but he always carries a signet-ring.”

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • They have relapsed into the analphabetic state of their ancestors; they are great at eloquence; and, though without our poetical forms, they have a variety of songs upon all subjects and they improvise panegyrics in honour of chiefs and guests.

    Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo 2003

  • Not quite ANY book, however, for the book-wallah, though analphabetic, had learned to recognize and refuse a Bible.

    Burmese Days 2002

  • But the later ones, from the viceregal period onwards, are in the vernacular and display a marked deterioration; one must suppose that they were printed for such of the common people as could still read (up to a few years ago, sixty-five per cent of the populace were analphabetic).

    Old Calabria Norman Douglas 1910

  • So not a few of the Amirs of Sind were analphabetic and seemed rather proud of it: "a Baloch cannot write, but he always carries a signet-ring."

    Arabian nights. English Anonymous 1855

  • Indeed the wide diffusion of letters in the States, that favourite theme for boasting and bragging over the unenlightened and analphabetic Old World, has tended only to exaggerate the defective and disagreeable side of a national character lacking geniality and bristling with prickly individuality.

    Arabian nights. English Anonymous 1855

  • This well-known Arabist not only assisted me in passing the whole work through the press he also added a valuable treatise on Arabic Prosody (x. 233-258) with indexes of various kinds, and finally he supervised the MSS. of the Supplemental volumes and enriched the last three, which were translated under peculiar difficulties in analphabetic lands, with the results of his wide reading and lexicographical experience.

    Arabian nights. English Anonymous 1855

  • They have relapsed into the analphabetic state of their ancestors; they are great at eloquence; and, though without our poetical forms, they have a variety of songs upon all subjects and they improvise panegyrics in honour of chiefs and guests.

    Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 Richard Francis Burton 1855

  • However, in Slovakia, an analphabetic media prevails.

    The Slovak Spectator 2010

  • However, in Slovakia, an analphabetic media prevails.

    The Slovak Spectator 2010

Comments

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  • His hair and his skin are synthetic,

    His rhetoric coarse and pathetic,

    His thoughts at best vagrant,

    His falsehoods are flagrant

    And worse - he is analphabetic.

    April 30, 2019